Executive Order: What can the Moreland panel do?

This one is for all the defense attorneys out there — it’s the Executive Order issued by Gov. Andrew Cuomo creating a special investigative panel to look at the state Board of Elections, lobbying oversight and “investigate weaknesses in existing laws, regulations and procedures relating to addressing public corruption, conflicts of interest, and ethics in state government, including but not limited to criminal laws protecting against abuses of the public trust.”

The Executive Order invokes three sections of the Executive Law: Section Six (the Moreland Act) which allows for a commission investigate the affairs of an agency, Section 63(8) which allows the governor to give the attorney general authority to investigate “matters concerning the public peace, public safety and public justice” as well as Section 63(3), which gives the attorney general the power to prosecute. This last power is only delegated “as appropriate” and upon the referral of State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico, a Cuomo appointee.

Cuomo and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said this cocktail of authorizations, as outlined in a column by Richard Brodsky, gives the commission jurisdiction to examine the affairs of the State Legislature, subject only to limited exceptions for “core legislative activities.”

We’ll have to wait and see if anybody — again, I’m talking to the Abbe Lowells, Stu Joneses and Bill Dreiers of the world — challenges that.